There is a step in the Clean Reinstall tutorial showing how to rescue data from Win7 which will not start or is too unstable.
I would not reimport any settings as this is a corruption path.
Can you navigate the current install and access your files from built-in Admin account? You might try running the Repair Install.
Last edited by gregrocker; 06 May 2013 at 23:25.
Assuming that your personal data is stored within My Documents, you may need to log in to built-in Administrator to salvage the data, as greg suggested.
I believe you may need to use Safe Mode to do so.
If not, you have to use other means like booting from a Live CD, for example...there should be another tutorial in this forum for that purpose.
I think I will proceed with the repair install as it seems to me that there is no downside to it?
It's up to you. I would do the reinstall to assure you have a perfect Win7 install which results from sticking with the tools and methods given in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7.
The Repair Install can pass back through some corrupt settings and not fully reverse the ruin resulting from using tools like Tune Up Utilities.
I see your point, but since a repair install does not take much time I might try this first and then, if things do still not run smoothly again, consider a fresh start.
Let us know how it goes.
The repair install took quite long with about a dozen of restarts (or so it felt) but it finally finished.
The interesting thing is that this has NOT resolved the issue with the main user account showing only a black screen (that is, not being able to run explorer.exe).
In my opinion, I have two options:
a) create a new user profile and move all my data (not the settings) from the old damaged account
b) make a clean fresh install of Windows 7 or 8
I'll now sleep over it and resume Wednesday afternoon.
Steve06,
Give this a whirl...
After you log in and get to the blank screen, press the Ctrl Alt Delete keys, simultaneously. Ctrl Shift Esc
may work also.
Task Manager should open.
Go to the Processes tab, and look for: Explorer.exe
If it is there, right-click it, and select: End Process
Once done, whether it was there or not, go to the Applications tab, and click: New Task...
Type in: Explorer.exe
Hopefully, this will force the GUI to load...
We tried such a thing a couple of pages ago. The problem is that explorer.exe is not loaded by default and when you launch it it appears for a second in the process list but immediately vanishes. The question is why it is shutting down.
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